Storage capacities in various hard drives and memory sticks are seemingly levelling out, so there’s nothing too new in this department that we’re seeing come to market. However, if we look at the release of the Lexar Jumpdrive Tough, you can see that manufacturers are caring a little more about the kind of protection they’re including with their new memory sticks.

The Lexar Jumpdrive Tough is their new installment into the world of flash storage. It’s covered in a soft touch but solid plastic which is promised to give the stick a solid amount of protection. Lexar have stated that their new thumb drive will survive in up to 96ft of water, between -25°C to 150°C. If you find yourself being squashed by something, the Tough will survive up to 750PSI.

There is also a small loop at the end of the stick that could be used for some kind of lanyard or a carabiner to keep it on your person. This kind of storage device is definitely aimed at the adventurous type, or even those who are working on the move who have a higher risk of dropping their possessions.

On the inside you will find a 250-bit AES encryption software keeping your sensitive files safe under password incase the drive is lost. The drive comes in several capacities, starting with 32GB (£22), 64GB (£00) and finally a 128GB (£00). The interface is a USB 3.1 connection although it’s back-compatible too into a 3.0 and 2.0 port.

We ran a FlashBench benchmark on the stick, and although Lexar has advertised up to 130MB/s read and 60MB/s write speed, we found through our results that it was closer to 120MB/s read speed and a 50MB/s write speed on a 16MB file transfer. These differences between advertised and actual are so negligible though, and it may be the fact that we ran the test through a USB 3.0 connection, but still, there’s nothing much to complain about here.

What you’re really getting here is a focus on protection, rather than excellent transfer speeds. Although there is no way you can complain at what Lexar offer by any means, the stick has a focus on people who are going to be carrying their data around with them and need some form of external protection. There is no extra cost compared to similar form factor rugged thumb drives on the market, so there is no premium price to pay. For more information, please visit the Lexar Jumpdrive Tough webpage.